5 ms·

You realize the world's birth rate has already been on the decline for decades, correct? And in general, the bulk of this occurred not because of coercion, but

You realize the world's birth rate has already been on the decline for decades, correct? And in general, the bulk of this occurred not because of coercion, but because of economic development and the ensuing shifts in optimum family strategy.

deleted 9y ago
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hughw 9y ago
Yes but I can't say for sure the cause is economic development. It seems likely, but it's a correlation, not a proven cause.
esrauch 9y ago
When you say "birth rate is falling" its effectively the second derivative on "number of people" right? As in, if we have go from 2 children born per person to 1.5 children born per person, we are still growing the number of people. Even if "children per person" falls slow enough you could even indefinitely increase the rate that new people are added right?
- joeyo 9y ago
  That's right, but note that the replacement rate depends on mortality rates and any gender-bias for either birth or mortality. Generally birth rates below 2.1 are consider "sub-replacement", but it can be much higher in some locales (due to disease, war, etc). Here are some per-continent population projections: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_(UN).svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_(UN... (Interestingly, the above chart was created about 10 years ago; I do wonder how accurate it's been.)
- hughw 9y ago
  I said children per family, not per person.
  - esrauch 9y ago
    I don't really understand the distinction: fewer children per family is the same thing as fewer per person right? Like if you have 1.4 children per person on average that means exactly 2.8 children per adult man + woman? All I meant to point out is that "birth rate falling" doesn't map to "population falling", if the average number of children per couple drops 2.5 to 2.1 then each generation is still larger (and the population still grows exponentially).
    - hughw 9y ago
      Yeah, it has to fall below 1.0 child per person for the population to decline. And it's commonly reported that is happening in developed countries.
TheCoelacanth 9y ago
In fact, the world already hit "peak child" some years ago. The number of children in the world has stopped increasing. That means that the world's population is now only growing because of life expectancy increases and not because of increased numbers of people being born. The population will continue to grow for a while because of developing countries' life expectancy catching up with developed countries, but unless there are drastic technological breakthroughs to improve life expectancy beyond where developed countries are now, the world population will stop growing fairly soon.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

hughw 9y ago

Yes but I can't say for sure the cause is economic development. It seems likely, but it's a correlation, not a proven cause.

esrauch 9y ago

When you say "birth rate is falling" its effectively the second derivative on "number of people" right? As in, if we have go from 2 children born per person to 1.5 children born per person, we are still growing the number of people. Even if "children per person" falls slow enough you could even indefinitely increase the rate that new people are added right?

joeyo 9y ago
That's right, but note that the replacement rate depends on mortality rates and any gender-bias for either birth or mortality. Generally birth rates below 2.1 are consider "sub-replacement", but it can be much higher in some locales (due to disease, war, etc). Here are some per-continent population projections: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_(UN).svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_(UN... (Interestingly, the above chart was created about 10 years ago; I do wonder how accurate it's been.)
hughw 9y ago
I said children per family, not per person.
- esrauch 9y ago
  I don't really understand the distinction: fewer children per family is the same thing as fewer per person right? Like if you have 1.4 children per person on average that means exactly 2.8 children per adult man + woman? All I meant to point out is that "birth rate falling" doesn't map to "population falling", if the average number of children per couple drops 2.5 to 2.1 then each generation is still larger (and the population still grows exponentially).
  - hughw 9y ago
    Yeah, it has to fall below 1.0 child per person for the population to decline. And it's commonly reported that is happening in developed countries.

TheCoelacanth 9y ago

In fact, the world already hit "peak child" some years ago. The number of children in the world has stopped increasing. That means that the world's population is now only growing because of life expectancy increases and not because of increased numbers of people being born. The population will continue to grow for a while because of developing countries' life expectancy catching up with developed countries, but unless there are drastic technological breakthroughs to improve life expectancy beyond where developed countries are now, the world population will stop growing fairly soon.